- A seminar TRANSLOCAL EXPRESS. JUBILEE EDITION that was held this February at the Museum of Occupation in Tallinn (Estonia), addressed the growing tendencies of nationalism on Eastern borders of Europe and their reflections in contemporary art. Your personal and professional perspective - from the specific context of the Baltic region - coincides, to a certain extent, with the aforementioned subject. What is the link?
After the fall of communism in Europe it was radical nationalism, which substituted free ideological space in most of the transition countries. In the Balkans the war was a solution to the tensions, which followed when leaders got rid of the soviet political anti-fascistic “correctness” and started to define new enemy– the ethnical minority (instead of “the West”). The idea was easy and effectively supported by the masses – all social problems were to be solved if real national majority rule would prevail. But in countries like Bosnia, Latvia, Estonia – there were extremely serious problems considering national “majority” definition. Bosnia paid bloody price for being not typical nation-state. Baltic countries did not face violent ethnical conflicts, but deep social conflict is still preserved and cultivated by national populists, who still lead these countries.
- During our conversation in Tallinn, we touched upon the issue of “erased citizens” as experienced, for example, in the recent history of Slovenia (in 1992), when “the newly independent state of Slovenia deleted the names of some 30,000 residents from the nation's civil registries”, as reported by Jim Fussell,
What was your immediate reaction regarding your regional context?
- Just like in any national state ethnical minorities is always an “obstacle” for comfortable development. Almost half of population in Latvia and more than one third in Estonia ethnically do not belong to the ethnical group, which defines the name of the country. Most of the “strangers” are former soviet citizens and their children, who immigrated to the Baltic during the second half of XX century. When Latvians and Estonians gained independence in 1991 they refused to provide citizenship to the Russian-speaking people, even to those, who were born in the countries. It was not the case in Lithuania, which provided new passports to all legal residents. Latvian and Estonian (not Baltic) invention was 2 types of passports: passports for the citizens and so called “grey” passports (non-citizens or aliens passport). Non-citizens have no voting rights, limited rights on pensions, they are not allowed to work in government, police and civil services. This legal segregation was implemented by the last elected soviet parliaments in Latvia and Estonia just after proclamation of independence. The paradox is that people who are now non-citizens elected this parliament too. People voted for the deputies, who implemented administrative “cleansing” on them afterwards, taking away their basic political and some specific social rights. The victims had chosen their butchers.
Having such an amount of “frozen” immigrants pushed two Baltic states into development of integration strategies. The naturalization and integration policy of the last 18 years failed, because the numbers say that there are still about 500 000 “gray passport aliens” in Latvia and Estonia (number of citizens is about 3 million). Last year Bronze soldier riots in Tallinn, although manipulated well by Russia, still demonstrate absolute failure of Estonia integration policies. Anger, deprivation and unequal treatment are not producing condition for successful integration but violence and instability. Just like democracy cannot be built on oil-war, integration is not a must per se for a minority human being.
- And the position of EU, in that regard?
The history of EU position towards non-citizens issue in Latvia and Estonia reveal many interesting points about EU immigration policy development. EU never supported officially the discrimination policies, but the official comments on the issue have always been modest and calm. EU is not active in reducing most obvious discrimination: non-citizens in Latvia, who lived all their life in the country, for instance, are still not able to vote (not any more in Estonia) in the local elections (and of course not in general elections), however the right to elect Latvian local councils is provided to all EU residents by EU law. The problem of “aliens” didn’t cause many difficulties for Latvia and Estonia to enter the EU. To say more – it looks like EU is using similar methods on immigrants as Baltic nationalists did on their minorities. Despite the declarations and growing budgets of human rights institutions, EU is still about defending the nationals. Half a century ago Hannah Arendt has warned that being only a human being is not enough to survive, because “human rights” will always be specific, second-hand rights. This is exactly the case in post 9/11 western thinking, which is obsessed with an idea to diminish number of immigrants and to implement aggressive integration policies on them for security reasons. Absolute minority of politicians realizes the fact, that it is almost impossible to regulate migration, especially by hard measures such as border control. Instead concentration upon migration limitations, mass deportations, "border-walls", active migrant detention and assimilation, EU has to examine other possible alternatives of police measures to provide better and more effective aid directed towards the reasons for migration. Unfortunately, instead of using soft and alternative policies, EU is making efforts to legalize by the European law the old-fashioned and expensive system of migrant detention. Growing number of migrant detention centres across Europe and in the neighbouring countries symbolizes conservative approach to the solution of the illegal migration problem. European “nationalism” makes those in power in Brussels blind and they don’t see that it is not possible to solve the problem of illegal migration except for making it legal.
TOMAS TOMILINAS is a political scientist and activist based in Vilnius. In his academic work, he is interested in transitional development, migration, nationalism, conflict prevention, international aid and adult education. He has been working in NGO’s and project management; in the field of political consultation during parliament and president elections; election observing in post-soviet area and civic Internet. Currently working as a political officer in the Human Rights committee of Lithuanian Parliament.
Before the official start of the Victims' symptom, planned for early 2008, a serial of interviews will be published on this blog. Besides commenting, you can send your proposals with questions or full interviews that would shape the upcoming discussion.
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